Edgebanding tip

[Matt Meiser]

I remember seeing this tip somewhere a while back, but gave it a try the other day edgebanding panels for my cabinets. I was having a lot of trouble with the banding tearing when I trimmed it and found that setting up one side for a "pre-trim" mostly eliminated the problem. Some banding was ironed to the inside of the trimmer to space the knives away from the panel for the pre-trim side. I made one pass with this side, one pass with light pressure on the regular side, then one pass with heavier pressure. Other than normal sanding, there wasn't anything else I had to do.

[Jim Becker]

Just so I'm understanding you clearly, you make one pass with the side that has the shims you applied to get "close" and a final pass with the other side to get flush? (I may need to invest in some edge banding stuff for the cabinetry work I'm doing, so I'm trying to learn something here...)

[Matt Meiser]

Yes, that is exactly correct. When removing a lot of material it tends to tear badly, so this gets the bulk of it leaving some to trim at the end.

For edgebanding, the tools I use are a $15 iron from Wal-Mart, this trimmer, and a utility knife to do the end cuts. This is the first non-shop project I've edge banded, but all the shop ones are holding up great.

[Don Bullock]

Nice tip Matt. I don't recognize which (company, brand, model) trimmer you are using. Would you please let me know? Thanks.

[Matt Meiser]

It is a Fast Edge trimmer from FastCap.

http://www.fastcap.com/prod2.asp?page=trimmer

http://wwhardware.com/catalog.cfm/GroupID/Edge%20Tape%2C%20Cabinet/CatID/Installation%20Tools/showprod/1